1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing system, an information processing method, and a computer-readable storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A semiconductor manufacturing apparatus for manufacturing a semiconductor device can generate a large amount of apparatus data in the process of manufacturing a semiconductor device. The apparatus data can include, for example, data pertaining to events that occur in the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, and data indicating the measurement results. The apparatus data can be recorded in a shared database and used for, for example, abnormality detection, status diagnosis, and abnormality cause analysis for the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus.
A semiconductor manufacturing apparatus is always required to form finer patterns and therefore its precision may be frequently improved by, for example, upgrading control software to control it. To keep up with this improvement, the unit and the number of significant digits of the measurement value obtained by a measurement unit mounted in the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus may be changed. When such a change takes place, it takes a lot of trouble to find and correct a portion, where the unit or the number of significant digits has changed, in analyzing the apparatus data output from the semiconductor manufacturing apparatus.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-13819 discloses a technique of managing numerical data in combination with the unit of the numerical value, and a technique of converting the unit of the numerical data to another one in response to a unit conversion instruction. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-110182 discloses a technique of converting data at the data extraction source so as to meet the specifications of data at the data extraction destination in accordance with the conversion process contents registered in a data conversion library and the conversion relationship defined in an item conversion map.
Unfortunately, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 7-13819 and 2004-110182 neither disclose nor suggest a technique of managing a data definition and its version in association with the period for which apparatus data is recorded in conformity with the data definition, and utilizing the managed data.